Years later
by Hopeless27
Summary: What truly constitutes a life well spent? Is it really this? This is the story of Hyotei Gakuen. Atoji, Dirty, Silver, HiyoGaku, HiyoTaki
1. the house

**Rating: T (for maturity)**

**Summary: reverse time angst fic**

**Pairing: Atoji, Dirty, Silver, HiyoGaku, HiyoTaki**

**Category: Angst/General**

**Characters: Hyotei**

**Disclaimer: POT IS NOT MINE (if it was, I'd know what i'd do with it ;)**

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><p><strong>Years later<strong>

Time was in reverse as the rows of cars pulled up from the weeded gravel. What was once a proud mansion was now a chest of forgotten memories. There was no resistance to the opening of those memories except for the creaking of the floor as the door was gently pried open. It was the sound of old hardwood and decay but to them, it might as well be the cry that came before the veil was lifted on unrevealed secrets. The workers entered the abandoned mansion with a sense of trepidation. Dust and cobwebs lined the once decadent display of wealth. As they climbed the heavy staircase, its marble covered in plastic and grime, the wind lifted the layers of dust around them. The ancient blueprints they used were frayed at the edges, and the wording and lines hard to make out, but they stumbled their way into the bedroom. One worker lit a cigarette, and the thin wisp of cigarette smoke joined the gray dust.

They walked and catalogued, objectifying memory, sorting recollections. The vandals had strewn the expensive silk across the floor, and they paid no heed to its fragility as they moved across the vast hallways into the maze of the house.

The house had no nursery, no sign of childhood, but for two dolls that lay side by side, so out of the way, so proletarian, that it seemed to have been misplaced. They sat together on a marble pedestal. It was the only thing in the house not directly covered by the thin sheets of plastic. It was the only thing in the house that resembled some sort of human sentiment, a lasting echo by those who had once lived there.

The house was a mystery that nobody could solve, and those workers that were there merely tried to document what they saw for posterity. The house would be torn down, the memories erased and the impressions gone. The mansion itself seemed to wish for it. For the crumbling end of its life, it seemed overburdened, old and lost in nostalgia. It concealed too much, and it would be put out of its misery, its secrets filling the very air with lost hope.

Its last inhabitants were long dead.

A young man in a silk suit followed the workers, his eyes narrowing as they adjusted to the darkness of the mansion. He was the young Atobe heir, and this was the house of his ancestors. It was built in the western fashion, this long forgotten house of the formidable Atobe dynasty, a mere line on their yearly review that they never paid heed to. The young man was the first one in many generations to come back to the place where it all started. As he walked through the house, his Oxford shoes and blonde hair blended so perfectly with the Neoclassicial architecture that he looked like some sort of ghost from times long past. The workers seemed to pay him a certain reverence as he lit a cigarette with them. For a while, he paused, surveying the heavy marble and the golden facades of the halls. As he watched the silver decanters and the crimson snuffboxes, packed in dull cardboard boxes, make their way out the intricate layout of the mansion, his eyes delighted on those two dolls.

For a moment he didn't know what to make of them, for a moment he stood transfixed at the two dolls. They were a recollection of the past, a past he didn't dare explore and of ghosts he didn't dare disturb. So he walked away.

The house was demolished two days later, and the property sold to the government. It was the last of the Atobe properties in Japan. As they watched the house disappear, they did not wonder why its previous residents had left it.

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><p><strong>AN**: Hola! Long time no see. Don't worry, the happy fics are coming. But before they come, I needed to get the angsty stuff out of my system. I love you all so very much. I hope you guys like this one. (This entire fic in all its chapters is tentatively finished... i have an awkward habit of adding stuff in tho... ) If you like it, let me know. Hate it? gimme feedback. :D

Also, it's updating slowly because Ica, my editor, is obsessed with Code Geass and TVTropes and doesn't care about me enough. Blame her.

To make this easier, cuz a lot of the stories are just for the each character/pairing, each chappie will be titled after the people in it. The POV will be the name of the chapter with the rest of the characters in brackets.


	2. Shishido side Atobe

**Decades**

He didn't intend to live the longest out of all of them but he does and he feels ashamed for it, like it was some dirty little secret he carries and he cannot even share it with anyone. He knows he doesn't deserve it, or perhaps it in itself was a sort of punishment for his sins. Five years ago, he had caught a glimpse of the paper announcing the death of the business tycoon Atobe Keigo, and he knew he was the last one. He wonders why he lives so long, and for a brief moment he doubts whether he really is alive and he isn't stuck in his own hell of unknowing. He doubts that Satan had such a sense of humour.

Shishido can no longer move, he can no longer feel and all he has to seep in is his memory, and he knows that his own God was punishing him for it. He laughs, and he hears the sound, but he knows that his body was beyond that function. How long has it been since he began counting age in decades and not years?

Had he been truly happy in this life? He couldn't really answer that question anymore. He had given himself up to fate so long ago and lived with abandoned expectations. He had worked, married, had children, and lived the sort of sordid upper class existence that his parents and grandparents had lived until he was numb. He hates himself for it. It was the easy way out and Shishido does not remember when he had resigned himself to taking the easy route. He had given up his hopes and ambitions to settle into a life that he knew would not hurt him, and retreated to his own little cocoon not to emerge as a butterfly but to slowly die.

His grandchildren put down the newspaper and wheeled him to the television. He does not pay attention until he hears the music, and he stops. His mind is blank and for once in his life, he has no memories. His children and grandchild surround him, and they hear of the excavation of the Gothic cathedral by students of the prestigious Hyotei Academy. There is a song that they play and the sound brings a sort of silence to his family.

Shishido does not have to hear the song to remember, and for the first time in seventy years, a drop of tear falls down his withered cheek.

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><p><strong>AN: **expect the next chapter to be up within a week xD. because I'm lazy...


	3. Atobe

**Close, oh so close**

His body is pinned like a moth, leaving a mark on the dust . He sprawls out on the floorboards, the cold hardwood pressed against his cheek. Atobe doesn't remember how long he has been there. The scent of ambergris and aloeswood wafted to him from the floor, and he presses his ear to the end of the planks of wood, dreaming of hearing something.

There was no sleep for him tonight. There is no waking.

It was all gone, and sometimes he wished that he would remember what it was like to have something again. Anything.

(Certainly, he had it all – a trophy wife, a son to carry on the family name, he had done everything that was expected of him. Didn't he?)

A gentle wind stirred from the serene windows, and the heat became less overbearing. He felt the hard floor press up against his chest, his ribcage struggling to sustain breath.

Layers of thin gauze lifted from the long open French doors and gently caressed his cheek, the swish almost sounded like a whisper, almost sounded like _him_.

Soot blows from the empty fireplace. The day is drab, and the night threatens to repeat. His shoulderblades had already begun to ache, and he welcomes the pain.

Then he feels ridiculous, and he doesn't know why – as if somebody is watching him. His brain does not rationalize.

When he finally pulls himself up from the floor, the layers of disturbed dust had already settled, and he wonders if the house had tried to swallow him, had tried to let him feel something again for once in his life. He would never have done it. He would never leave this place.

There is a large mirror on the wall, and as he sits up, he sees his own reflection in it. The same ruined handsomeness, the same eyes of sapphire and skin of pale pink roses, those alizarin lips, and wasted beauty he had known before. His face was no longer icy perfection. The crystalline exterior had been breaking and he was alone.

He closes his eyes, and hears his whisper again. Hears all those whispers, together, gentle, and familiar – if he tried he could almost feel their touch. He leans back, and his lips part, he could feel _his_ kiss, and then he wishes he never has to see his reflection again.

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><p><strong>AN: **Atobe this time. It's really true. The more you like a character, the more you feel like torturing them. Isn't that true? xD Leave a comment/review and I'll luff you forever!


	4. Oshitari side Atobe and Mukahi

**Its lack**

The sky was sun bleached and bare and stretches into the horizon in hopeless emptiness. Even the luxury of the mansion could not hide its barrenness. Oshitari takes a drag from his cigarette. He does not remember when he took up the habit. The smoke fills his lungs and he feels for a moment calm. He tries not to dwell on the particulars, and he smiles at the irony of the sole heir to the long line of doctors taking up a deadly habit. From the corners of his eyes he could sometimes see the disapproving looks, but they were never those eyes that he wished for most.

After a moment, he leans out from the balcony and feels the wind for the first time in a long time. He wishes Gakuto was here, but didn't he always? He didn't even know where Gakuto was, and he had long since forgotten how they fell apart.

He begins to feel small in the light of the large open sky, the pure blue of which was ruined by the powerful sun. He does not know why he accepted the invitation to the engagement party but that it brought him back again to the place where he had once felt he belonged. It no longer felt like home to Oshitari, and the once familiar halls were now filled with something closer to wistfulness. It was far too easy to be lost in the melancholy.

Perhaps he wanted to tell Atobe that he was making a mistake. And instinctively he knew that he was not going to tell Atobe because he felt Atobe deserved to know. He thinks of his fiancée, and he feels like a hypocrite. He knew the outcome. He wanted to feel the pain that Atobe would inflict on him. It was at least something.

And maybe it would, for a second, feel like old times.

He blows the smoke from his lips in a thin, straight stream and wishes it would pollute the clear sky. He wishes that the sky was not so empty and free, that it pressed down on him like his heart did. The cigarette smoke mingles with the silk curtains and he smiles. He wishes someone would make him stop but they don't. Perversely, he does it for their disapproving looks. He doesn't know why it amuses him so much.

It was spring again, and the bugs and creatures of the summer had not yet awoken from their winter slumber. There was silence.

And Yuushi doesn't know how to stop it.


	5. Hiyoshi

**His image,**

Hiyoshi had dreamt of the mansion again. Those dreams of things that happened so long ago they were merely an imprint of a time in his memory, so buried that it was like a dream in itself. When he sleeps he knows that it will seem real again and he wishes it was something that he could physically hold. He sits up in his bed and turns on the lights. It seems garish and it takes a moment for his eyes to adjust.

The light does not let him remember, nor does it let him forget.

He wishes that all the light in this world was sucked away by a black hole, and then perhaps he would dream forever.

He spends the night tossing and turning. He does not sleep again.

_Well isn't this just fucking typical?_ He swallows, but his throat is dry.

As the sun rose and red light peeked through the Venetian blinds in the morning, Hiyoshi pretends that the world is on fire, and he would burn away rather than fade out.


End file.
